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Rissoles of Cold Meat

A mixture of chopped cooked meat, mashed potatoes, and seasonings formed into balls and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Rissoles of Cold Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. In a bowl, combine the chopped meat, mashed potatoes, parsley, onion, pepper, and salt.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter and mix in the flour. Gradually add the stock, Worcestershire sauce, and ketchup.

  3. Stir over heat until the mixture boils and thickens. Add the meat mixture and beaten egg, and mix well.

  4. Transfer the mixture to a plate and let it cool.

Shape and fry

  1. With floured hands, shape the mixture into balls.

  2. Heat the pan and fry the balls in batches until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve on a napkin with fried parsley or in a border of mashed potatoes with brown gravy.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Parsley + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cooked meat
Provides the main body and savoury flavour of the rissole filling.
Mashed potatoes
Add moisture and body, keeping the rissoles tender inside.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and forms the base of the thickened sauce.
Flour
Thickens the stock with butter to bind the mixture together.
Egg
Binds the filling so the rissoles hold their shape when fried.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aroma to the filling.

The step that matters

Cooling the mixture before shaping. The mixture must be cool and firm enough to handle; if it is still warm and soft, the balls will be sticky and may fall apart in the pan.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, potato, butter, onion, flour, sauce, ketchup):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, potato, butter, onion, flour, sauce, ketchup. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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